Revenues were about the same as they were last year ($1.6 trillion) - reflecting increases in receipts from corporate income taxes and from the Federal Reserve’s payments to the Treasury, which were largely offset by decreases in individual income and payroll taxes. Receipts from corporate income taxes were up by about $31 billion (or 31 percent), the result of both improved economic conditions and lower depreciation charges. Receipts from the Fed increased by $35 billion, primarily because the central bank has increased the amount of assets it holds and has shifted to riskier investments in support of the housing market and the broader economy. In contrast, receipts from individual income and payroll taxes declined by $57 billion (or 4 percent), mostly because nonwithheld payments reflecting 2009 tax liabilities were lower. Withheld taxes have dropped as well (by about 2 percent)—but declines during the first part of the fiscal year were followed by increases in each of the past four months (compared with receipts in the same months last year).

Spending during the first nine months of the fiscal year was $2.6 trillion—about $70 billion (or 3 percent) less than outlays at the same point in 2009. That decline includes a net reduction of about $350 billion in major components of spending related to the recent financial crisis—the Troubled Asset Relief Program, Treasury payments to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and net outlays for federal deposit insurance. Spending for all other federal activities rose by almost $280 billion (or 11 percent). Payments of unemployment benefits increased by $41 billion (or almost 50 percent) and interest on the public debt was up by about 20 percent. Outlays for Medicaid rose by 9 percent, and defense spending and payments of Social Security benefits were both 6 percent higher. Spending for food and nutrition assistance, the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund (created by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act), student aid, and refundable tax credits also increased significantly.

The U.S. military UAV market is forecast to grow at a CAGR of 10% between 2010 and 2015, according to U.S. Military Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) Market Forecast 2010-2015, a new market study from Market Research Media. The report predicts the U.S. military UAV market will generate $ 62 Billion revenues over the period 2010 – 2015.

Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Information Dominance, Vice Adm. Jack Dorsett said:

“This agreement allows us to leverage the shared and complementary expertise of the Navy and Air Force and deliver agile, interoperable systems to the warfighter. We also look forward to the increased efficiencies that this approach will deliver to the benefit of both the BAMS and Global Hawk programs.”

Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Lt. Gen. David Deptula elaborated:

“This memorandum of agreement is a tremendous opportunity to collaborate and seek out greater efficiencies and synergies between our two services. We believe it’s the right thing for the service chiefs, combatant commanders, the Department of Defense, and ultimately our Sailors, Airmen and Marines out there in combat.

We’re going to focus on basing, maintenance, aircraft command and control, logistics, training and the data requirements for processing exploitation and dissemination of BAMS and Global Hawk. Take for example if we decide to jointly base in Italy. We can eliminate excessive personnel redundancies by having only one squadron based there instead of two. We can have Navy personnel operating Air Force Aircraft and vice versa.”

The MOA covers six categories which will be examined closely by a soon to be established Synergies Working Group, (SWG). The SWG will identify and make recommendations that maximize Service program commonalities and efficiencies.

This MOA effort is led by the Deputy CNO for Information Dominance (Navy) and the Air force Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance who also support the Under Secretary of Defense of Intelligence.

RFA Vice President of Research Geoff Cooper said:

“American ethanol producers continue to be forced to look for overseas markets for their product as domestic markets for ethanol remain saturated due to the regulatory cap on blending levels. The transition of the United States to a net ethanol exporter due to its status as the low cost producer today is a reflection of the industry’s commitment to improving efficiencies and displacing petroleum. However, it also underscores the domestic opportunities lost due to the arbitrary cap on ethanol blending. As a matter of national energy security, America should first seek to maximize its use of domestic renewable fuels before it turns to overseas markets.”

The ethanol industry is awaiting a decision by the U.S. EPA on increasing ethanol blending allowances from 10 percent to 15 percent. Additionally, some in the industry have urged EPA to provide some immediate market relief through the approval of 12 percent blends while it finalizes work on E15.

The report projects the U.S. Government Deep Packet Inspection market to grow at a CAGR of 36% from 2010 to about US$ 1.8 Billion by 2015.

The report covers the DPI products, technologies and services for U.S. Government market, including security of government IT networks, cyber security and cyber warfare tools and systems, surveillance and monitoring capabilities of national security agencies.

The virtual conference and trade show market has more than doubled in a year from 2008 to 2009 and analysts of Market Research Media expect this trend to continue. Attendance of physical professional events has long suffered from economic stagnation, influenza and and terrorist act fear.

The “Virtual Conference & Trade Show Market Forecast 2010-2015” report by Market Research Media presents a detailed analysis of the current state of the market and technology behind it, and provides year-by-year forecasts by market segments and geographic regions.

Very high speeds in which electrons propagate are necessary to create high-speed, high-performance next generation transistors. Graphene, a single atom-thick layer of carbon atoms bonded in a hexagonal honeycomb-like arrangement, is the cornerstone element for achieving high propagation speeds. This two-dimensional form of carbon has unique electrical, optical, mechanical and thermal properties and its technological applications are being explored intensely.

Uniform and high-quality graphene wafers were synthesized by thermal decomposition of a silicon carbide (SiC) substrate. The graphene transistor itself utilized a metal top-gate architecture and a novel gate insulator stack involving a polymer and a high dielectric constant oxide. The gate length was modest, 240 nanometers, leaving plenty of space for further optimization of its performance by scaling down the gate length.

The frequency performance of the graphene device already exceeds the cut-off frequency of state-of-the-art silicon transistors of the same gate length (~ 40 GigaHertz). Similar performance was obtained from devices based on graphene obtained from natural graphite, proving that high performance can be obtained from graphene of different origins. Previously, the team had demonstrated graphene transistors with a cut-off frequency of 26 GigaHertz using graphene flakes extracted from natural graphite.

1. Roadrunner
The Roadrunner supercomputer at Los Alamos is the first computing system in the world to reach a petaflop, computer jargon for 1 million billion calculations per second, a record that stood for a year and a half. But the real accomplishment is that Roadrunner reached that goal using an entirely new computing architecture.

The secret to its record-breaking performance is a unique hybrid design. The full system consists of 278 server racks containing 6,562 AMD Opteron™ dual-core processors and 12,240 PowerXCell 8i™ Cell processors, a special IBM-developed variant of the Cell processor used in the Sony PlayStation®3. The node-attached Cell accelerators are what make Roadrunner completely different than typical computing “clusters.”

Roadrunner also is one of the most energy-efficient supercomputers. Using approximately 3 megawatts of power at sustained petaflop performance, the system produces about 500 megaflops per watt, more than twice the efficiency of the average supercomputer.

More information: Worldwide Defense High Performance Computing (HPC) Market Forecast 2010-2015

2. Ardi
A Los Alamos National Laboratory geologist is part of an international research team responsible for discovering the oldest nearly intact skeleton of Ardipithecus ramidus, who lived 4.4 million years ago.

The discovery reveals the biology of the first stage of human evolution better than anything seen to date. The fossil, nicknamed “Ardi,” is the earliest skeleton known from the human branch of the primate family tree. The discovery provides new insights about how hominids—the family of “great apes” comprising humans, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans—may have emerged from an ancestral ape.

The discovery and associated research were named Science magazine’s Breakthrough of the Year for 2009 and selected by Time magazine as the #1 science story of 2009.

3. Climate modeling & monitoring
LANL innovations in high-resolution climate modeling and monitoring led to new insights into the impacts of climate change at global and regional scales.

The changing conditions in the ocean due to increased acidity from increased CO2 is one of the unknowns in future climate change projections. LANL’s Climate, Ocean, and Sea Ice Modeling effort for DOE and the National Science Foundation develops the highest-resolution dynamic models of the world’s oceans and polar icecaps.

Although up to 80 percent of the world’s oxygen is generated by photosynthetic processes in ocean phytoplankton and other sea plants, the effects of this photosynthesis on removing CO2 from the atmosphere have not been included previously because of the lack of available computing power.

Harnessing the petaflop capacity of LANL’s Roadrunner supercomputer (see #1 above), Lab researchers recently examined the effect of mesoscale ocean eddies (a few miles in size) on the transport of nutrients crucial for the growth of phytoplankton. These eddies cause vertical transport of nutrients, which is crucial for the growth of phytoplankton.

The model can then calculate surface chlorophyll concentrations, and compare to satellite images. This model is dramatically better than the previous state of the art in resolution and its ability to capture biological complexity.

The regional effects of global climate change on western U.S. forests also are important to understanding future impacts, especially as forests comprise an important CO2 sink. The widespread die-off of piñon trees in the Southwest is now being followed by a larger-scale pine mortality in the Mountain West. LANL scientists documented a new mechanism for this mortality, called carbon starvation. It has been widely presumed that trees die of hydraulic failure (drying out). Instead, they die from closure of the tiny pores on the surfaces of leaves that permit the exchange of gases between the atmosphere and the leaf. When the pores are closed (to prevent water loss during extreme drought), the photosynthetic uptake of carbon also stops, starving the trees. This type of mortality has been documented on all six vegetated continents and is increasing, with climate change, across all biomes (forest, desert, grasslands, tundra, and aquatic ecosystems).

This work is an enormous step forward in demonstrating that regional climate change drives a global-scale response of vegetation mortality. Massive forest die-offs can change vegetated areas from carbon sinks to carbon sources.

More information: Worldwide Defense High Performance Computing (HPC) Market Forecast 2010-2015

4. MagViz
LANL’s MagViz team pioneered the use of modified magnetic resonance imagery (MRI) technology to distinguish and alert airport security staff to potentially dangerous liquids and gels in airport carry-on baggage.

Using extremely low magnetic fields and high-powered computer analysis, the MagViz equipment was demonstrated for its Department of Homeland Security sponsors and potential Transportation Safety Administration users at the Albuquerque International Sunport.

A new area of development is a bottled-liquid scanner system based on the same technology.

More information: Homeland Security News

5. First dual-axis hydrodynamic test
LANL scientists and engineers fired the first-ever double-viewpoint, multiframe hydrodynamic test at DARHT, the Laboratory’s Dual Axis Radiographic Hydrodynamic Test facility – leading to future experiments at LANL and across the nation’s nuclear security enterprise, supporting the stockpile stewardship and weapons assurance mission. “Initial data return was excellent,” said the hydrodynamic experiments division leader, David Funk. “The baseline experiment captured five time-dependent X-ray images and a variety of data from other diagnostics of pressure, temperature, and timing. This data provides the nation with one of the most rigorous tests of our capability to predict weapons performance.”

6. Hurricane prediction
A system of sensors developed by Los Alamos National Laboratory for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s nonproliferation mission has also begun to give meteorologists their most detailed view of the relationship between hurricanes and lightning.

By examining the rate and nature of lightning in the hurricane’s eye wall, scientists may begin to be able to predict the potential strengthening of these destructive storms.

7. Fuel from plants
Los Alamos National Laboratory has teamed with Solix Biofuels, Inc. to use an award-winning LANL sound-wave technology to optimize production of algae-based fuel in a cost-effective, scalable, and environmentally benign fashion.

Acoustic focusing—the novel use of sound waves at the heart of the Los Alamos Acoustic Flow Cytometer, a 2007 R&D 100 Award-winning technology—is being commercialized in partnership with Solix to harvest biocrude, or “green gold,” an alternative to crude oil that can be refined into biodiesel, gasoline, or even jet fuel. The technology is to be deployed in 2010 to Solix’s Coyote Gulch Demonstration Facility near Durango, Colorado, for real-world production of lower-cost biofuel.

In addition, research breakthroughs using the LANL Protein Crystallography Station (part of the Lab’s LANSCE facility) to probe the structure of cellulose are making the prospect of affordable, efficient production of cellulosic fuels closer to reality. The Protein Crystallography Station is the only resource of its kind in the United States and the first protein crystallography beam line to be built at a spallation neutron source.

8. IBEX
The invisible structures of space are becoming less so, as scientists look out to the far edges of the solar wind bubble that separates our solar system from the interstellar cloud through which it flies.

Using the High Energy Neutral Atom Imager, led by LANL, the NASA Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) mission has sent back data that indicates a “noodle soup” of solar material has accumulated at the outer fringes of the heliosphere bubble. The Los Alamos camera detects particles that are heated and stream away from that boundary, specifically the density and temperature of atoms that form the core of that layer.

9. Laser-particle acceleration for cancer therapy
Laser-particle acceleration is an emerging area of physics expected to enable significant future advances in cancer radiotherapy. An international team of physicists led by LANL has accelerated protons to world-record high energies that are otherwise only achievable with large accelerator facilities. Proton radiation at the achieved energy range can be used, for example, to treat eye cancer.

The new record-proton-acceleration energies were demonstrated at LANL’s Trident facility—the world’s highest-contrast, high-intensity, high-energy laser. Physicists bombarded specially designed thin films created using nanotechnology with short bursts of laser energy. The electric fields generated from this bombardment were used to accelerate protons to energies higher than ever before achieved—capable of destroying cancer cells.

10. Nanotechnology for Energy Frontiers
Two LANL teams were awarded lead roles as DOE Energy Frontier Research Centers to develop new materials for energy.

The Center for Advanced Solar Photophysics will capitalize on recent advances in the science of how nanoparticles interact with light to design highly efficient materials for the conversion of sunlight into electricity. The purpose of this EFRC is to develop novel physics, materials, and architectures for harvesting solar light and converting it into electrical charges with efficiencies above equilibrium thermodynamic limits. Such materials can boost the efficiency of solar-energy conversion.

The Center for Extreme Environment-Tolerant Materials has as its objective to understand, at the atomic scale, the behavior of materials subject to extreme radiation doses and mechanical stress in order to synthesize new materials that can tolerate such conditions. This EFRC will develop a fundamental understanding of how atomic structure and interfaces contribute to defect and damage evolution in materials, with such potential applications as structural materials, fuel cladding, and waste forms in the next generation of nuclear power reactors and structural materials in transportation, energy, and defense.

The $3.4 billion in grant awards are part of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, and will be matched by industry funding for a total public-private investment worth over $8 billion. Applicants state that the projects will create tens of thousands of jobs, and consumers in 49 states will benefit from these investments in a stronger, more reliable grid. Full listings of the grant awards by category and state are available HERE and HERE. A map of the awards is available HERE.

An analysis by the Electric Power Research Institute estimates that the implementation of smart grid technologies could reduce electricity use by more than 4 percent by 2030. That would mean a savings of $20.4 billion for businesses and consumers around the country, and $1.6 billion for Florida alone — or $56 in utility savings for every man, woman and child in Florida.

One-hundred private companies, utilities, manufacturers, cities and other partners received the Smart Grid Investment Grant awards today, including FPL, which will use its $200 million in funding to install over 2.5 million smart meters and other technologies that will cut energy costs for its customers. In the coming days, Cabinet Members and Administration officials will fan out to awardee sites across the country to discuss how this investment will create jobs, improve the reliability and efficiency of the electrical grid, and help bring clean energy sources from high-production states to those with less renewable generating capacity. The awards announced today represent the largest group of Recovery Act awards ever made in a single day and the largest batch of Recovery Act clean energy grant awards to-date.

Funding recipients include:

• Empowering Consumers to Save Energy and Cut Utility Bills - $1 billion. These investments will create the infrastructure and expand access to smart meters and customer systems so that consumers will be able to access dynamic pricing information and have the ability to save money by programming smart appliances and equipment to run when rates are lowest. This will help reduce energy bills by helping drive down “peak demand” and limiting the need for “stand-by” power plants – the most expensive power generation there is.
• Making Electricity Distribution and Transmission More Efficient - $400 million. The Administration is funding several grid modernization projects across the country that will significantly reduce the amount of power that is wasted from the time it is produced at a power plant to the time it gets to consumer. By deploying digital monitoring devices and increasing grid automation, these awards will increase the efficiency, reliability and security of the system, and will help link up renewable energy resources with the electric grid. This will make it easier for a wind farm in Montana to instantaneously pick up the slack when the wind stops blowing in Missouri or a cloud rolls over a solar array in Arizona.
• Integrating and Crosscutting Across Different “Smart” Components of a Smart Grid - $2 billion. Much like electronic banking, the Smart Grid is not the sum total of its components but how those components work together. The Administration is funding a range of projects that will incorporate these various components into one system or cut across various project areas – including smart meters, smart thermostats and appliances, syncrophasors, automated substations, plug in hybrid electric vehicles, renewable energy sources, etc.
• Building a Smart Grid Manufacturing Industry - $25 million. These investments will help expand U.S. manufacturing base of companies that can produce the smart meters, smart appliances, synchrophasors, smart transformers, and other components for smart grid systems in the United States and around the world.

The benefits of the smart grid investments are:

• Reduce peak electricity demand by more than 1400 MW, which is the equivalent of several larger power plants and can save ratepayers more than $1.5 billion in capital costs and help lower utility bills. Since peak electricity is the most expensive energy – and requires the use of standby power generation plants – the economic and environmental savings for even a small reduction are significant. In fact, some of the power plants for meeting peak demand operate for only a few hundred hours a year, which means the power they generate can be 5-10 times more expensive than the average price per kilowatt hour paid by most consumers.
• Empower consumers to cut their electricity bills. The Recovery Act combined with private investment will put us on pace to deploy more than 40 million smart meters in American homes and businesses over the next few years that will help consumers cut their utility bills.
• Leverage more than $4.7 billion in private investment to match the federal investment.
• Make the grid more reliable and robust, reducing power outages that cost American consumers $150 billion a year - about $500 for every man, woman and child in the United States.
• Install more than 850 sensors - called “Phasor Measurement Units” - that will cover 100 percent of the U.S. electric grid to monitor grid conditions.
• Install more than 200,000 smart transformers that will make it possible for power companies to replace units before they fail thus saving money and reducing power outages.
• Install almost 700 automated substations, representing about 5 percent of the nation’s total that will make it possible for power companies to respond faster and more effectively to restore service when bad weather knocks down power lines or causes electricity disruptions.
• Power companies today typically do not know there has been a power outage until a customer calls to report it. With these smart grid devices, power companies will have the tools they need for better outage prevention and faster response to make repairs when outages do occur.
• Install more than 1 million in-home displays, 170,000 smart thermostats, and 175,000 other load control devices to enable consumers to reduce their energy use. Funding will also help expand the market for smart washers, dryers, and dishwashers, so that American consumers can further control their energy use and lower their electricity bills.
• Put US on a path to get 20 percent or more of energy from renewable sources by 2020.
• Tens of thousands of jobs across the country. These jobs include high paying career opportunities for smart meter manufacturing workers; engineering technicians, electricians and equipment installers; IT system designers and cyber security specialists; data entry clerks and database administrators; business and power system analysts; and others.

EIA found also that, globally, the cumulative investment in wind turbines and solar photovoltaic panels from now through 2030 could be $2.1 trillion and $1.5 trillion, respectively. When the starting gun sounded on the clean energy race, the United States stumbled.

China has already made its choice. China is spending about $9 billion a month on clean energy. It is also investing $44 billion by 2012 and $88 billion by 2020 in Ultra High Voltage transmission lines. These lines will allow China to transmit power from huge wind and solar farms far from its cities. While every country’s transmission needs are different, this is a clear sign of China’s commitment to developing renewable energy.

The United States, meanwhile, has fallen behind. The world’s largest turbine manufacturing company is headquartered in Denmark. 99 percent of the batteries that power America’s hybrid cars are made in Japan. US manufactured more than 40 percent of the world’s solar cells as recently as the mid 1990s; today, US produce just 7 percent.

This first ARPA-E solicitation was highly competitive and oversubscribed, with over 3,600 initial concept papers received. Of those, approximately 300 full applications were requested and ultimately 37 final awardees through a rigorous review process with input from multiple review panels composed of leading U.S. energy science and technology experts and ARPA-E’s program managers. Evaluations were based on the potential for high impact on ARPA-E’s goals and scientific and technical merit. The Department of Energy (DOE) announced major funding for 37 ambitious research projects in 17 states. The grans are distributed as following: about 43% are small businesses, 35% are educational institutions, and 19% are large corporations.

“After World War II, America was the unrivaled leader in basic and applied sciences. It was this leadership that led to enormous technological advances. ARPA-E is a crucial part of the new effort by the U.S. to spur the next Industrial Revolution in clean energy technologies, creating thousands of new jobs and helping cut carbon pollution,” said Steven Chu, United States Secretary of Energy. As a scientist, Chu is known for his research in cooling and trapping of atoms with laser light, which won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997.

Some of the innovative projects selected for awards include:

• Low Cost Crystals for LED Lighting: Developed by Momentive Performance Materials, this proposal for novel crystal growth technology could dramatically lower the cost of developing light emitting diodes (LEDs), which are 30 times more efficient than incandescent bulbs and four times more efficient than compact fluorescents. This higher quality, low-cost material would offer significant breakthroughs in lowering costs of finished LED lighting, accelerating mass market use, and dramatically decreasing U.S. lighting energy usage. Lighting accounts for 14 percent of U.S. electricity use.
• Bacteria for Producing Direct Solar Hydrocarbon Biofuels: Researchers at the University of Minnesota have developed a bioreactor that has the potential to produce a flow of gasoline directly from sunlight and CO2 using a symbiotic system of two organisms. First, a photosynthetic organism directly captures solar radiation and uses it to convert carbon dioxide to sugars. In the same area, another organism converts the sugars to gasoline and diesel transportation fuels. This development has the potential to greatly increase domestic production of clean fuel for our vehicles and end our reliance on foreign oil.
• Liquid Metal Grid-Scale Batteries: Created by Professor Don Sadoway, a leading MIT battery scientist, the all-liquid metal battery is based on low cost, domestically available liquid metals with potential to break through the cost barrier required for mass adoption of large scale energy storage as part of the nation’s energy grid. If successful, this battery technology could revolutionize the way electricity is used and produced on the grid, enabling round-the-clock power from America’s wind and solar power resources, increasing the stability of the grid, and making blackouts a thing of the past. And if deployed at homes, it could allow individual consumers the ability to be part of a future “smart energy Internet,” where they would have much greater control over their energy usage and delivery.
• CO2 Capture using Artificial Enzymes: Today’s funding will support an effort by the United Technologies Research Center to develop new synthetic enzymes that could make it easier and more affordable to capture carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and factories. If successful, the effort would mean a much lower energy requirement for industrial carbon capture and significantly lower capital costs to get carbon capture systems up and running. Success of this project could substantially lower the cost of carbon capture relative to current, state-of-the-art amine and ammonia based processes. This would represent a major breakthrough that could make it affordable to capture the carbon dioxide emissions from coal and natural gas power plants around the world.

The table below presents funding winners: